John Hazard was a leading scholar of Soviet law and a pioneer of Western Sovietology. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a JD from Harvard Law School, he became an ICWA fellow in the Soviet Union, spending six years studying law there in the 1930s. Later, he earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago. During World War II, he joined the Soviet desk of the US government’s Division of Defense Aid, helping negotiate Soviet participation in the Lend-Lease program. He was an adviser on Soviet law during the Nuremberg Trials and went on to have a distinguished academic career at Columbia University, cofounding its Russian Institute (now, the Harriman Institute). He is the author of numerous books on Soviet law and government.